White) - either end of resistance wiper circuit - probably the wiper of the feedback pot. To an Arduino Analog Input.

NOW - if you were to replace the internal circuitry with an H-Bridge you would still need the transistor or MOSFET to control the clutch. It would be much simpler to use a couple transistors/MOSFETS to control it than investing in an H-Bridge.

White) - either end of resistance wiper circuit - probably the wiper of the feedback pot. To an Arduino Analog Input.

NOW - if you were to replace the internal circuitry with an H-Bridge you would still need the transistor or MOSFET to control the clutch. It would be much simpler to use a couple transistors/MOSFETS to control it than investing in an H-Bridge.

I guess you and I just read those specs differently:

Quote

Yellow - drives motor to pull shaft in (with 12 volts on Yellow and earth on Orange)Orange - drives motor to push shaft out (with 12 volts on Orange and earth on Yellow)

I read that as the polarity of the applied voltage on the yellow and orange wires determines the direction the motor will move/turn. So that means you can't have a permanent ground wired to either the yellow or orange wires, so that spells H-drive required where I hang out.

zoomkat: with the suggested h-bridge (TLE5206) I am not sure how I would be able to activate the electromagnetic clutch.. other than that it seems a well priced H-bridge and more than capable of driving the actuator in question.

retrolefty: I was also confused by the description regarding the polarity of the yellow / orange and is why I thought an H-bridge was required, having used them in the past to reverse the direction of simple little DC motors it seemed like the solution. However, what confused me was the electromagnetic clutch and how to activave it through the h bridge, reading your comments and also kf2qd it seems that using a separate arduino output to activate the clutch (via a MOSFET) would achieve the desired effect.

the actuator should be here tomorrow, so will try out the different suggestions and see what works, getting a potentiometer working as per kf2qd's instructions would be great..

linear actuator arrived today, and seems to work great with the h-bridge setup, as retrolefty pointed out the direction of the actuator is controlled via the flip in polarity, with the clutch needing a separate 12v (via mosfet) control cable running from the arduino. I also needed to connect the earth from the actuator to the gnd coming out of the mosfet.. overall seems to work well, next step is to get the whole thing working over OSC..

noisier than I planned for but as they are being used in a capacity where there is a lot of other sound design I don't think it will pose an issue, their main attraction for me was the price and the electromechanical clutch, which works really well. As for speed, it takes about 1.2 seconds to fully extend..

just had another quick question regarding this thread, hoping someone might be able to shed some light. After getting the linear actuator working with the H-bridge driver SN754410 I had lying around (http://uk.farnell.com/jsp/search/productdetail.jsp?sku=9592997), I wanted to find a more suitable driver that could produce the 2A required for the linear actuator in question (the one i had tested with could only output 1.2A.. and I want to be able to get the maximum out of these motors).

I ordered the following component : http://uk.farnell.com/jsp/search/productdetail.jsp?SKU=403295 - which appears to be able to output 2A (per channel), however I cannot seem to get it to work, should it behave the same way as the other h bridge adapter?I have wired it up as follows:

just tried it.. no response as yet.. looking online it seems that the setup requires some more components than i had not anticipated, a number of capacitors etc. I have ordered a simple motor shield from ebay that uses the same L298 driver, so will see how i get on with that..